God Is Certainly Not Great

I picked this one up a while ago and have only just now been able to get around to reading it. Hitchens does a great job in portraying his position, does a great job in illustrating his position by using both his own personal experiences with his extensive travels as well as backing it up with irrefutable history that any "believer" cannot avoid acknowledging.

With God Is Not Great we see Hitchens move from the evils that religion brings along with it as well refuting the points that "believers" use to try and convince others of why their religion, above all others, is the true and correct religion. This last point was very interesting because Hitchens was able to point out various aspects of religions that are undeniably copied from other religions that were its predecessor. For example, Jesus was not born on Christmas, but it was convenient to use this holiday for several reasons. The first was in the Scandinavian countries the pagans celebrated this holiday of Saint Nick and gift giving and decided to usurp it to add credence to the belief in Jesus. Additionally, the 25th was specifically chosen because as the Christians were taking over the power struggle in the Middle East they wanted to ease some cultures into their transition and acceptance of Christianity, so they usurped a popular Mesopotamian God's birthday as Christ's own. Both do nothing more than make it easier for non-Christians to accept Christianity.

Another example Hitchens gives is his recounting of the Muslims plagiarism of the Old and New Testament in order to create their Koran. Or Joseph Smith plagiarising the New Testament when he dictated the Book of Mormon. These are obvious answers that any "believer" can find themselves. So how is it that their religion is the true and correct one when all it is is a plagiarism of other "revealed" religions?

But those are points on the false nature of religion, on the aspects of religion that are exploited upon, are used to pray on people's fears. Or the old casuistry of what do you have to lose? If he exists and you believe then you are safe, if he doesn't exist than you haven't lost anything in believing in him. Or praying on the fears of sinning will send you to rot in an eternal hell. Oh, and my favorite is when people claim that it is religion that holds our society together and not letting it fall into criminality and violence. Which begs the question, are they saying that if they didn't believe in God then they would rape, pillage and steal? Nonsense. Morals are not religion driven, they are innate.

Finally, Hitchens points more directly towards the hypocrisy of religion and how religion poisons everything. He says at one point: "The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre..." This was an aptly put observation, one that is glossed over when people praise their religion. If they actually read the holy book that their religion is based off of then they would be appalled at what their book promotes. Oh, but we follow the ways of the New Testament, not the Old Testament, some would say. Nonsense, you can't have one without the other because the New Testament was based off of fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies. Additionally, Jesus, if he existed, was a Jew, so he did follow the Old Testament, and who are we to try and not follow the Old Testament when that was what he followed?

I could go on and on with the hypocrisy and ludicrous idea behind accepting any religion as a reality. I would like to point out that Hitchens does talk a good deal about other religions besides Christianity, which is a huge plus in order to understand where he is coming from. He may not write as well as Dawkins, but he went into more detail which adds a ton to his credibility.

5 stars.